CSPC Meet & Greet, Oct 23

CSPC Meet & Greet
Monday, October 23, 2017 at 7:00-9:30 pm
Optimism Brewing Company
FREE

Drop in for a casual meet and greet with members of the new board! Catch up with old friends and make new ones =)

Just in case you haven’t been to Optimism before, they do not serve anything but beer (no wine, mixed drinks, or food). Outside food is allowed. The Green Tree Shawarma food truck will be parked out back. A block away is my favorite vegan-friendly heavy metal pizza joint, Sizzle Pie. You are also welcome to have something delivered or bring your own take out food; remember to grab silverware and napkins. Just be sure to clean up after yourselves at the self-bussing stations.

Parking can be hairy in Capitol Hill. Metered parking is your best bet, which runs until 8 pm. Otherwise try south of Union. We encourage kinky carpools! Alternatively, the pub is an 8 minute walk south of the Capitol Hill light rail station.

If you’re on FetLife, please RSVP so we can let the venue know what to expect.

Hope to see you there!

Nick

Relaunching Events! survey

Good afternoon members and subscribers =)

First off, thank you for all the warm welcomes and encouragement as our new team pushes off the starting block. Lindsey and I got the chance to sit down with Allena Gabosch, who offered so much warmth and insight, particularly on making the Center inviting when for many, stepping into that first encounter with our freaky crew can take all the courage in the world. Brief history lesson: Allena is a founder of the CSPC and ran it's predicessor, Beyond the Edge Cafe, that held kinky events in its basement that was located next to what is now Babeland in Capitol Hill. But I digress.

We are compiling a list of preferences for relaunching events for the CSPC, both for helping us secure a permanent space in collaboration with the FSPC (our sister org) and for the one-off venues we rent in the meantime. In order to respond to community needs, we'd love to hear your voice! Please complete this quick survey by next Monday so that we can discuss takeaways at the upcoming board meeting. Feel free to forward this to others.

Relaunching Events! survey <5min; due by 10/9/17

Thanks for your help!
Nick

Introduction to New Leadership

Dear marvelous members as well as the broader kink community, 

If you read Russell’s most recent update (FetLife link = NSFW), you know that the CSPC is undergoing a leadership transformation. As the newest members of the board and the incoming leadership, we wanted to take a quick moment to introduce ourselves.

Our names are Nick, Lindsey, and Jess, and we are the driving force behind the next phase in the organization’s life. We are a group of queer, poly, kinksters who are obsessed with consent, social equity, and style. Our backgrounds span startups, change management, nonprofit governance, finance, event production, and community engagement. Perhaps our biggest hope for the Center is to have a diverse membership who co-creates enticing spaces to explore consensual sexuality.

Wednesday night marked our first meeting as members of the board, as well as the last day for five long standing members. We are so grateful for the blood, sweat, and tears they have poured into this organization and honored to receive their enthusiastic blessing and ongoing support.

To keep you up to speed, these are the main topics that we covered at the meeting.

• The CSPC is in the process of formalizing its relationship with its sister organization, the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture (FSPC). As a refresher, we used to be a single entity and split to better serve our respective missions. The CSPC (501c7) is the members-only social club while The FSPC (501c3) focuses on education and the arts.
• We are in discussions with The FSPC about securing a long term space. They will be taking the lead on the search, with the intention that the CSPC would rent space from them. This arrangement is advantageous due to their 501c3 status.
• In the meantime we are looking both for one off and short-term venues to host parties. If you know of a great space please let us know!
• Attendees of the meeting expressed the desire to help with the relaunch and for more frequent communication from leadership. We hope this letter is a good start!

Along with these updates, we will periodically release quick surveys to get your thoughts on one or two issues that are currently in discussion. We appreciate your input. Feel free to reach out to us on FetLife or to the board through president@thecspc.org. Our next board meeting is October 11th from 7pm-9pm at the Phinney Ridge Neighborhood Association in room 31 (brick building). We hope you will join us!

That’s all for now. We are beyond excited, and deeply humbled, to be here. There is both a lot to learn and a lot to do, and we look forward to continuing this sexy journey with you. 

Name: Nick aka Mandroid
Pronouns: he/him/Sir
Interests: the smell of sandalwood, collar bones, zen, consent, sustainability, audiobooks, Ethiopian food, outlandish brainstorming, dark chocolate, hip hop dancing, science fiction, developmental psychology, chess, vintage motorcycles

Name: Lindsey aka Her RoyalHineyness
Pronouns: she/her
Interests: consent! sex positivity, making toys and building furniture, improv cooking, hosting parties, backpacking, skiing, entrepreneurship, organizational change, social justice, and prison reform

Name: Jess aka Femme_Daddy
Pronouns: she/her/Daddy
Interests: Femme4femme aesthetics, drag, queerness, intersectionality, consent, cyber witches, closeted artists, outcasts, comics, equal energy exchange, brats, printmaking, gogo dancing, dog toes, community building, matte lipsticks, platforms, and ice cream

RFP Announcement

On Wednesday, the Board of Directors met and decided on a path forward for the organization. This was the culmination of months of effort of all involved, both on the board and in the teams that submitted proposals for the next stage of the CSPC's existence.

First, we're pleased to report that the Center for Sex Positive Culture and the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture will be sharing the same building. The FSPC will run the building, and we will focus on hosting events for our membership. This is a natural alliance which should ensure the new space's long-term sustainability. Additionally, we expect that the FSPC's experience in the fine arts should result in a beautiful space, which should help the CSPC better reach a wide range of sex-positive communities.

Perhaps even more significantly for the long term, we're pleased to report a radical transformation and invigoration of the CSPC's leadership: over the next few months almost every member of the CSPC's current board of directors will resign, to be replaced by new leaders including (but not limited to) every member of one proposal-submitting team, and an expert in non-profit development from a second proposal-submitting team. We believe, as you meet these new board members, that you will be pleased with the enthusiasm, skills, and new ideas they bring. Those of us stepping back to make way for this new generation will remain available to provide whatever of our collective experience they wish - this organization remains important to us, and we want it to succeed.

Taken together, we believe these changes can be characterized as our organization getting back to its roots. The FSPC and the CSPC used to be the same organization, after all. It's unlikely there will be full-time paid staff, making our organization wholy volunteer-run again. Your new board will be a fully working board, instead of largely a policy-making board. And although there might be fewer weekly events, each one will receive far more passion and care.

Our organization was founded in 1999 on a three-part dream: that it be a real non-profit (both to ensure volunteer confidence that their work benefits only the community and to ensure peaceful leadership transitions), that it follow a community center model (so that its participants could form the kind of long-term friendships which can transcend play), and that it strive to serve all the distinct facets of contemporary sex-positive culture (not only out of a belief that we have more in common than separates us but because it's often at the boundaries between communities where interesting things happen). We believe this dream is just as valid today, and that this combination of a reinvigorated alliance with the FSPC, new board members every bit as enthusiastic and capable as those at its inception, and hopefully your personal choice to proactively find the best ways your unique skills can support it, will together make this dream new again.

Sincerely,
Russell Harmon for the CSPC Board of Directors
(I had to send the bad-news announcements, I get to send the good-news announcement)

A letter from the CSPC President

 From the CSPC President

I have some very unfortunate news; our new building is no longer viable, due to the cost of required seismic improvements. We are negotiating with the landlord to find a way out from under the lease. Conversations about how we want to move forward from here are ongoing.

We knew this building would require a lot of work, and we budgeted for that plus a healthy margin. Before we signed the lease in November, we had a structural engineer give us a preliminary seismic assessment of what it would take to bring the building up to code. Based on that professional assessment, we decided to move forward with the lease. In the middle of March, they came back to us with a surprising update of several times their initial estimate. We were unable to reach an agreement with the building owner to share or assist with financing those projected costs, or find any other way to mitigate them.

The time, rent, and construction expenses for this process have used a lot of our reserves. Given the long timeline for construction permits, we have no way to continue with paid staff until a future buildout is finished - for the foreseeable future, the organization will have to be entirely volunteer driven. At her own recommendation Jeanette, the Managing Director, will be laid off after helping us get out of the new space and other ongoing costs. She is not at fault in this set of events, she's done an amazing job in an incredibly difficult situation and has earned our gratitude.

I can't begin to describe how personally upsetting this is to me, and the rest of the board. The Wet Spot, then The Sex Positive Community Center, then the Center for Sex Positive Culture, have been the social core of seventeen years of my adult life. So many people have put so much into this, and to have a setback of this magnitude is disheartening to all of us. This organization has had tremendous positive impact on countless lives, and we still hope to find a way to further the goal of a sex positive space in years to come.

As we know more, we will keep you updated. The next board meeting is 7pm on May 10, at 1514 NW 46th St. Comments and questions in the meantime can be directed to Elizabeth, our Community Board Member, at cbm@thecspc.org.

Russell Harmon
Center for Sex Positive Culture Board President